Towards the fag end of his net session under the unforgiving sun in Lucknow on Friday, a member of Team India support staff exited from a SUV, being used to cover distance between practice area and main ground, holding a tennis racquet and around a dozen tennis balls. He rushed to the far net where Shubman Gill was batting and started hurling balls towards the right-hander from a few feet away.
Gill would dodge a few, duck plenty and roll his wrists ever so slightly to keep the pulls along the ground. There were cuts, upper cuts and flashy shots outside the off-stump before he seemed satisfied and finally walked out of the nets to catch some shade in the makeshift tent in the training facility.
Tennis racquet and balls are out. Shubman Gill working on his reflexes against short ball in the far net…— Sahil Malhotra (@Sahil_Malhotra1) October 27, 2023
It was another Gill marathon session as the opener faced different variety of bowlers – from Mohammed Shami to Mohammed Siraj to Kuldeep Yadav to Shardul Thakur to throw down specialists to plenty of net bowlers – and kept switching surfaces with little hydration breaks in between.
There is so much method in the way he goes about in the nets and every strip sees a different Gill on exhibition. It’s more about getting feel of the ball while facing side-arm music, some lofted shots while facing spin and getting right behind the line of the delivery when the quicks are in operation. For him, the importance of a quality net session is second to none and it’s something which has been a part of his preparations right from his age-group days.
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Optional training? What’s that!
Even this World Cup, the only time Gill wasn’t training – Chennai and Delhi – was when he was recovering from dengue. The moment he got clean chit from the medical team, first thing he did was take the next flight from Chennai to Ahmedabad and hit the nets next morning.
The drill was repeated the next day and normalcy returned to India’s training sessions. May it be the heat in Ahmedabad or the pleasant evening in Pune or the chill in Dharamsala, Gill has always been one of the first entrants in the nets and he is one of the last few to exit the premises. The words “optional training" don’t exist in his vocabulary and every different day is another opportunity for him to bat for hours in the nets and stay switched on for match day.
Scores of 16, 53 and 26 in the three World Cup outings so far don’t make the kind of reading he has made us used to in the last 12 months but Gill has looked in supreme touch in the three games he has played so far. The game against Pakistan saw him time the ball sweetly, he looked assured during his maiden World Cup half-century in the Bangladesh game and was unfortunate to not get enough legs on the upper-cut off Lockie Ferguson in Dharamsala.
Signs of returning to purple patch
No daddy score yet but the three knocks saw sublime touch and enough signs of returning to the purple patch he was cruising in before the bout with dengue. The Gill touch of the past is the only thing missing from this formidable Indian batting unit and if he regains the mojo before the business end of the tournament, India will be a serious force to reckon with.
Rohit Sharma has been in a different zone, chase master Virat Kohli is at his best, lot of promise from Shreyas Iyer and ice man KL Rahul continues to be Mr Consistent at No.5. Add Gill of the old to this sentence and this batting line-up will give nightmares to opposition bowlers. Preparation and routine wise, the youngster, even after losing a few kilos, has returned to full intensity and it’s a matter of time when the big runs effortlessly flow off his blade again.
Like the Dharamsala game and numerous games before that, the classy right-hander will again take guard on the playing surface in Lucknow an hour before toss and shadow practice his range of strokes from both ends to switch the game mode on.
It’s a drill, slowly developing into another pre-match routine, where he visualises before the match, does a lot of shadow batting and then goes down on his knees to inspect firmness of the 22 yards. Unlike the marathon net sessions, the match-day drill doesn’t last more than 5-7 minutes but surely acts as a revision of the lessons learnt during hours of practice before the match.
Shubman Gill, nets and batting is a love story not ending any time soon and will only keep getting new episodes.
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